Questions about going Raspberry Pi 4 direction

[SPOautos]

Question for you guys....if I give up on Roon, what is the best comparison to Roon that runs on RPi4? Mainly I am looking for very good sorting, metatags, search by genre and other info....I really wanted a software that could make suggestions based on something Im listening too....kind of a Tidal experience but with my own library....Roon seemed to have that but what is the next best? A lot of people seem to like Moode. Something real important is the ability to play music easily using a phone. This will be used by people who dont want anything more difficult than using Spotify, so needs to feel easy and polished. I started out thinking about a plex, but I REALLY dont want to build a real computer and I've been buying so much lately that my budget is lacking lol.

 

[samsa]

You didn't say where the music is coming from. A NAS? A streaming service? A hard drive connected to your RPi? ...

 

[SPOautos]

You didn't say where the music is coming from. A NAS? A streaming service? A hard drive connected to your RPi? ...

That still has to be setup. At the moment I'm leaning towards just doing a hard drive connected to the RPi via USB 3.0 with the intentions of doing a full NAS later this year after I build up another round of funding.

 

[somebodyelse]

I'd guess PiCorePlayer/LMS for the sorting, given the variation in approaches to custom tagging that fans of classical and jazz have taken, but it will depend on you having tagged your collection appropriately. There are whole forum threads about how best to tag particular sorts of music to include the information they want - composer, conductor, soloists, venue and who knows what else. These tend to use the Custom Scan and Custom Browse plugins. If you go down that route it takes some initial setting up to get it how you want it, but once it's in place it's easy to use. For phone interfaces you can use one of the many apps like Squeezer or iPeng, or enable the Material Skin plugin for a browser interface that looks and behaves close to native on Android.

Having said that someone will probably say how good one of the others is - you'll probably have to do some reading or try a few to find out which suits you best.

 

[Guermantes]

JRiver Media Center is also now running on Raspberry Pi. It has a lot of auto-tagging features and remote access via mobile apps:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,123770.0.html

Not a lot on Pi 4 compatibility but that may simply be lack of testing. There is a 30 day trial available.

For the open source options, Volumio and Moode rely on MPD for library management whereas PiCorePlayer uses LMS. All are free to try, so once you have the Pi you can see which one suits your library and lifestyle.

 

[SPOautos]

I'd guess PiCorePlayer/LMS for the sorting, given the variation in approaches to custom tagging that fans of classical and jazz have taken, but it will depend on you having tagged your collection appropriately. There are whole forum threads about how best to tag particular sorts of music to include the information they want - composer, conductor, soloists, venue and who knows what else. These tend to use the Custom Scan and Custom Browse plugins. If you go down that route it takes some initial setting up to get it how you want it, but once it's in place it's easy to use. For phone interfaces you can use one of the many apps like Squeezer or iPeng, or enable the Material Skin plugin for a browser interface that looks and behaves close to native on Android.

Having said that someone will probably say how good one of the others is - you'll probably have to do some reading or try a few to find out which suits you best.

I've done some reading but since I dont have anything setup yet it's hard to really test them. I'm just trying to feel everything out to at least come up with an idea I want to go with....as it stands I suppose I'm not even positive I want to do a RPi.

 

[SPOautos]

I'm not stuck on any specific hardware or software. The main issue is budget and caring about sound quality. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to achieve it all on a budget. I suppose I'm considering all options. I'm not opposed to buying used. I've been thinking about just getting a used Qnsp ts-251+ for about $250. Apparently it's possible to run Roon (it meets minimum requirements but theres people doing it and happy) on it as well as Plex. But I'm not sure how I'd go from the nas to the Yam wxc-50. I'll be wanting to play some high res and I think Roon would have to see my Yam as a airplay which I think would cause it to reduce sound quality.

 

[Aldoszx]

From my point of view, there are 2 scenarios:
1. Keep using wxc-50

• in this case, you can use DLNA to stream via network; you'l need a DLNA server (PC, or RPi)
• keep the option to stream via bluetooth directly to wxc-50
• keep the analog in of wxc-50
• can use also RPi + Hifiberry Digi for example to connect to optical input of wxc-50.

2. Get rid of wxc-50

• you will need another DAC, USB or I2S (only for RPi)
• need ADC, if you want also analog in (for a phono pre for example)
• the DAC must have bluetooth capabilities if you want to continue streaming from your phone; an alternative is to use piCorePlayer and RPi bluetooth

In both cases, you need a streamer (could be a PC or RPi4 if you want) and a storage or NAS for music.
If you want Roon, first option is suitable only with last bullet in the list; otherwise, you cannot connect wxc-50 to Roon. And of course, you'll need Roon Server installed on a PC. Or, like you said, Roon + Airplay + wxc-50.

 

[Beershaun]

How much music storage do you need for your music? And are you planning to play it anywhere besides your Yamaha? The simplest solution may be to put it on a USB drive and plug it directly into the USB A port on the Yamaha. You can find 256 and 512gb USB drives these days for cheap. For my car audio I just put my entire library on a thumb drive.

 

[FeathersMcGraw]

Hi SPOautos,

I think Beershaun's questions are on topic. It sounds like your WXC-50 is a bit slow
when indexing and browsing your music collection, but is otherwise serving you well.

Amongst Aldoszx's options listed above, I vote for Option 1 (if I have a vote). I think
the WX?-50 family is a pretty nice piece of kit. It should be a perfectly good DLNA
renderer/player. The only streaming protocol it seems to not have is Roon RAAT, of
which I respect but am not a fan.

You need only a DLNA control point and DLNA media server. My personal favorite
DLNA control point on Android is the BubbleUPnP app. There are many others.
Part of the beauty of DLNA (and perhaps part of the pain) is that there are many
options that can be mixed and matched to find your Goldilocks combo.

The Yamaha MusicCast app appears to be DLNA compliant and might be a comfortable
choice, particularly when driving your WXC-50. If you later have all kinds of different
DLNA players and renderers sprinkled throughout your home, as I do, you might want
to instead arrive at a more general purpose DLNA control point. Again, BubbleUPnP
is my current favorite but concede that there are quality alternatives.

You'll also need a DLNA media server. ReadyMedia/miniDLNA is a free implementation.
There are others, both free and commercial. Right now I'm using the miniDLNA server
built into my Asus RT-AC3200 wireless access point. I connected a 1 TB Samsung T3
USB SSD containing my media library and works perfectly well. Something like a Pi or
Odroid-HC1/2 would be an interesting low cost and low power alternative. There's a
good chance that you already have a suitable platform in your possession to function
as the DLNA media server (even if only for auditioning purposes). The Linux box I'm
typing this reply on has a copy of my media library and miniDLNA, at zero additional
cost and just a config file edit away.

I know I'm going on and on about DLNA. Perhaps you are part of the Apple ecosystem
and might prefer AirPlay. Again, your WXC-50 is AirPlay compliant. It also has music
streaming service clients built in. Personally, I think you should experiment and play
with all the different ways you can use the perfectly good investment that you've made
in the WXC-50. None of this precludes later or simultaneously playing with other pieces
of kit, such as Raspberry Pi and other SBC's (a journey that I've recently begun).

 

[FeathersMcGraw]

Oh, I wanted to add that there is no reason why the piece of equipment functioning
as a DLNA media server cannot also simultaneously function as multi-protocol server
of the very same media content. It is trivial to have the same media library served up
via UPnP/DLNA, NFS, SMB/CIFS, FTP, etc. all at the same time by the same platform.

 

[doug2761]

I just finished adding a touch screen to my Pi 4 to make a Squeezebox Touch clone to play with and possibly use for a second system. I used the new HifiBerry DAC HD 2 hat for the converter and PiCoreplayer. It works great and I like the sound. I have LMS running on a separate PC but I saw that you can run it on the Pi 4. That might be a good way to go if you want a full set up on a small and inexpensive device. I think the DAC was about $100, the Pi 4 is around $50, screen about $80. You will likely have to do some tinkering with settings and remote ssh to get it going right.

I also run this set up as a Roon endpoint. For me I like Roon. I've gotten hooked on the room correction convolution capability. I also have a Chord Qutest that I use. To me the Qutest sounds better but it should at 20x the cost. Could be some unconscious bias there. I'd be quite happy with the HifiBerry DAC HD 2 if that was my only DAC.

If money wasn't an issue I'd go with Roon server to USB DAC or to Roon endpoint and USB DAC. If cost was top priority then I'd go with LMS, PiCoreplayer, Pi 4, and Hifi Berry HD 2 DAC hat (or your choice) for the Pi. I haven't played with the other Pi players. As others pointed out it's pretty easy to experiment. I have one SD card with DietPi and Roon Bridge and another with PiCoreplayer and Jivelite.

The way music streaming is going we might find that it's not worth dealing with managing our own storage and just stream everything from Tidal, Qobuz, or whatever is next. If that's the case then the server aspect could become moot.

 

[GeorgeWalk]

I have and RPi (running piCorePlayer) with an Allo Digi One interface hat https://www.allo.com/sparky/digione.html it works well. An other option would be RPI to Topping D10s then into the Yamaha.

 

[Beershaun]

I use Plex for my local digital music library on a Mac. It has tidal integration and you can use the two as one big library. It is free to install and use locally on your lan to see if you like it. I use bubbleupnp on my Android phone as a control point. It’s pretty great. It’s not available on iOS though. I currently use Moode on my raspberry pi with a hifiberry digi+pro as a streaming endpoint and feed my dac via coax out. Moode supports tidal, Spotify, and will stream from your local upnp server.

all that is a very small cost to test out and see if you like it. And as others have said get a couple extra 8gb microsd cards and you can simply swap out raspberry pi players to see which one works for you best.